Island native takes his sustainable-living message on the road

Friday

Aug 29, 2008 at 2:00 AM

By Gabriella Burnham I&M Staff Writer

Tyler Young walked along the water at the Great Harbor Yacht Club last week with a bag of human hair in his pocket.

He had just gotten a haircut at the club’s new spa and saved the normally-discarded clippings to donate to Matter of Trust, an ecological public charity that uses human-hair mats to soak up oil spills polluting the Earth’s oceans and coastal waters.

“Two feet by one foot (of human hair) about a half-inch-thick can absorb one pint of oil off the water’s surface, and then leave the water fresh and clean,” said Young, 28, who works as an advocate for sustainable living organizations on the West Coast, although he was born and raised on Nantucket.

Young’s father Robert is a real estate agent on-island and his mother Donna is a long-time Nantucket resident.

Young is also the family name attached to Young’s Bicycle Shop on Broad Street, which his grandfather started in 1931 and his uncle Harvey currently owns.

“Bicycling has always been the most environmentally-friendly mode of transportation there is. Ultimately it’s the ‘cycle-logical’ way to travel,” he said of his family roots in ecological living.

After graduating from the University of Oregon – where people tend to be exceptionally progressive about environmental issues, he said – Young decided to make a career out of educating the world about sustainable options.

The irony of talking about those options at Great Harbor, Nantucket’s second yacht club where his father is a member, did not escape him. Although he said the wealthy island residents who can afford private clubs probably do not think about sustainable living often (if at all), he is not afraid to speak to them about his cause.

“These are the people we want to help influence. They have so much power in the world, and this (the yacht club) is a great place where they can relax and forget about reality. But the actual reality is, the world is getting smaller. We need to do something about it.”

Young practices what he preaches. He is currently touring with the Sustainable Living Roadshow, a traveling caravan of educators and entertainers promoting environmentally-sound living strategies across the country. This is their first national tour, which they call “Be the Change,” and they have even caught the attention of Al Gore, who is helping fund their efforts with his organization Live Earth.

The Roadshow’s kick-off venue is the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, and next they will move to the Republican National Convention in Minnesota (“when it comes to the environment, we’re all on the same team,” said Young). After those two venues, they will tour college campuses and parks in six different states around the U.S.

For seven weeks, Young will devote all his energy to living a sustainable life. He will literally use his human-generated energy to power the Roadshow’s concert stages by simply pedaling a bicycle.

“The real idea isn’t to change everyone’s mind. You have to have more fun than them, and let them know it. Don’t push them – just go out there and show them how to do it right. If you have the loudest system, you’re having the most fun, and you’re all healthy and happy, ultimately everyone wants to join your team. And that team is Team Earth.” Young’s primary job in the Roadshow isn’t pedaling bicycles, though. It’s pedaling education, specifically about mushrooms.

While human hair absorbs more oil than any other substance in the world (which is why we have to wash it on a daily basis, he said), mushrooms can actually break oil-contaminated soil down into harmless compost.

“Oil is a long chain of hydrocarbons. Mushrooms will decompose the hydrocarbons and turn them into carbohydrates. Instead of taking this oil and burning it into the atmosphere, having it rain down on us, we can actually break it down into its raw form and then make it into soil in less than a year. That really blows my mind,” Young said.

The process is called mycoremediation, and Lisa Craig Gautier, the founder of Matter of Trust, along with Young and a handful of scientists and educators are the revolutionaries behind this concept of mimicking Mother Nature in order to rebuild a healthy environment. “We want to help restore the ecosystem . . . Mushrooms will break down all the hydrocarbons, little bugs are attracted to the mushrooms, and those will attract birds, then the birds will (go to the bathroom), drop seeds, and then in a year there will be a whole ecosystem,” Young said. “That’s a small-scale model of what we can do here on Earth.”

The Sustainable Living Roadshow also sets the example, on a smaller scale, of how humans can live without being reliant on environmentally-threatening corporations and practices.

All of the vehicles are run on biofuels, the entire Roadshow is completely off the grid (meaning they run on solar and other non-fossil-fuel-burning forms of energy), and their food is organically grown.

Even the shirt on Young’s back is made from organic fibers, in contrast to most T-shirts which are made from synthetic fibers or cotton that is grown using pesticides. They offer games where you shoot cans and plastics like basketballs into a bin to see who can recycle fastest, or throw bean bags at fossil fuels to reveal pictures of wind farms on the other side.

“The idea is to get out there and educate through entertainment. The kids love the games and everyone laughs and has a lot of fun. By making it fun and enjoyable, you open their hearts and their minds.”

To learn more about the Sustainable Living Roadshow or to donate to the cause, visit www.sustainablelivingroadshow.org.

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